I went to a local quilt fabric store to pick up some plain white fabric for a quilt my sister is making for my daughter. A quilt I planned to make, but never did. I couldn't resist this cute fabric, Hopscotch , to go along with the Jump Rope Dress by oliver + s . Hopscotch and Jump Rope , perfect. I made view B of the pattern with the long sleeves and no waist. It was fairly easy and fast. I was able to complete it in two days. The cut is very fitted and unfortunately, I should have gone with the next size up. Monkey pants will be five next month and is not too tall for her age. After measuring her and checking against the size chart , I went with the size four. She probably won't be able to wear it next Spring if she grows another centimeter. Bummer. Very cute though. Her favorite part was immediately the pockets. It was such a fun project to sew, I can't wait to make the other version, view A.

For my son's birthday, I decided to take an easier approach to the cake this year, so I went with cupcakes. A while back, my sister went to New York and brought me back this cupcake book, Hello, Cupcake . It has a lot of creative ideas decorating cupcakes with candy. I picked what looked like one of the easiest designs in the book which I thought was well suited for a two year old. Now, I'm not much of a candy person --OK, I'm not a candy person at all, so I had a bit of a time just locating the three or four different candies needed for the alligator cupcakes. In fact the Newman's Own Alphabet cookies were the hardest to find. But I finally tracked it all down and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Sadly, since I'm only running at half brain power these days, I forgot to put the teeth on. But I was quite pleased with myself that I happened to have a piece of brown linen fabric which I quickly sewed the edges on and some fresh lily flowers from our lit...

I was asked to make a wedding cake earlier this year and not having made any cakes for a while, I eagerly agreed.  Somehow I decided that it would be manageable despite the fact that the wedding date was my son's birthday and I don't think I was yet aware that I would be four months pregnant.  Nevertheless, this cake was much less stressful than the first wedding cake I made a year ago for my nephew although still a lot of work. It's a four tier fondant cake decorated with pale pink gerber daisies and black gross grain ribbon.  The bride was kind of going for a vintage-y country look loosely based on this Martha Stewart cake.  She wanted the cake on a porcelain pedestal but we couldn't find one big enough to accommodate the largest tier which was 14" in diameter.  I used a scalloped cake plate on top of a smaller ceramic pedestal to try to achieve the general feel she was going for.  Again, I had my friend help me with the fondant and this time also w...

Since this year has been pretty slow going with hand made projects, I decided to kick start my motivation with a fast and easy one. I've been wanting to make Heather Bailey's Pear forever but couldn't bring myself to pay, what for me is a premium for the pattern. So I finally caved. Here's the smallest project on the pattern of which I made several and they are every bit as cute. I intend to get my money's worth out of this pattern, so everyone I know will be getting one of these for any and every reason. Tip: I copied the pattern and re printed it on cardstock so it would be easier to trace onto the fabric without using pins and to preserve the original pattern.